The Yale University School of Medicine is currently undertaking a comprehensive initiative to integrate computer-based activities in support of medical research, medical education, and patient care. Our broad, long- term objective is to provide integrated access to medical information within the Yale-New Haven Medical Center. To allow us to achieve this goal, we propose to introduce a general purpose tool for information storage and retrieval, and to develop information systems based on this environment. To be more specific, we propose to install a commercially available, full- text database management system. This database management system will be used with commercial, institutional and personal text databases, from structured will then have the same mechanisms for queries, and will reside on the same computer; and thus users who learn how to access and use one database should readily generalize to others. Furthermore there will be more opportunity for integration of different databases within the same database management system. Initially we propose to develop three information retrieval systems based on this database system: (1) a Current Contents bibliographic database, (2) a Syllabus of the preclinical curriculum at Yale School of Medicine, and (3) a workstation being developed in the Medical Informatics Program at Yale. The proposed infrastructure and applications will be the basis for future applications using other sources of medical information, and will be integrated into medical informatics research and patient care information systems within the medical center.